Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part one

The Friend reports from the first days of Yearly Meeting preparation sessions and special interest meetings

This year’s Yearly Meeting proper begins on 26 July, but Friends have already begun to gather online for a series of preparation sessions, scheduled over 5-10 July. Special interest groups and Quaker Recognised Bodies have also been running online events. Staff from the Friend will be getting to as many as possible, but if we missed yours please let us know and we’ll try to catch up another way. This week’s coverage takes us up to Sunday 7 July.

The first sessions began just hours after Friends had woken up to a new Labour government. ‘I appreciate some of you may be short of sleep,’ said Laurie Michaelis as he welcomed some thirty Friends to Visions and pathways at a time of Earth crisis. The session by Living Witness asked the question ‘What is the spiritual vision that guides you, and how is it shaping your pathway in the time of this Earth crisis?’ Offering their own answers were Marco Bertaglia, founder of an eco-community in Italy, and Rajan Naidu, an activist perhaps best known recently for a paint protest at Stonehenge. 

Marco was inspired by the Quaker exhortation to ‘Let your life speak’. He talked about how Jesus had encouraged people to seek the kingdom of heaven, rather than be overtaken by day-to-day concerns. He wanted Friends to think about a world of abundance rather than scarcity, and how a more nurturing, maternal economy could replace the patriarchal one.

Rajan’s aim was to become the kind of person he’d like to be, remembering an old quote that is oft (but probably erroneously) attributed to William Penn or Stephen Grellet: ‘I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow-being, let me do it now.’

Friends offered their own responses to the question, with the theme of community prominent. It was important to keep positive, said one, and ‘you can only do that by keeping together’.

At the same time, Friends gathered for Establishing the involvement of British Quakers in the transatlantic chattel slave trade; colonialism and economic exploitation and addressing their legacies. This involved hearing of some ‘discomforting’ research.

Ann Morgan, from Lancaster Meeting, said ‘It is quite clear that our history is not all that is out there’. Quakers had a reputation as abolitionists, but ‘unfortunately… significant numbers of our community were involved in [enslaving people] in one form or another… Others were engaged in colonialism’.

Three fascinating but sobering presentations followed, detailing the extent of British Quakers’ involvement in the chattel slave trade and colonialism. Julia Bush, from the Bristol Area Meeting Reparations Group, spoke about Bristol Quakers’ involvement in chattel slavery in a city where, between 1698 and 1807, there were more than 2,000 slaving voyages started, with more than half a million African enslaved people forced onto ships. By researching Quaker records and families, the group identified twelve eighteenth-century Quaker families involved in the trade, including as slaveholders, slave traffickers, exporters, importers, and financiers. Some of them were significant donors to Bristol Quaker Meeting, and the rebuilding of Frenchay and Friars Meeting Houses. Some of these Quaker enslavers were also major financiers in the new Quaker banks. After showing historical documents listing enslaved people, Julia said: ‘I would love to pause for you to take this in – this is such important evidence.’ Emphasising that the group had read all the Bristol Quaker records, she added: ‘Not a single Quaker was ever disowned for trafficking and enslaving Africans.’ 

Ann Morgan then described Lancaster’s research and how it had been embedded in the local community, through a plaque in the Meeting house, and a leaflet kept by museums. By looking at the wills of Quaker families, money from slavery-involvement was traced into banking, and some into infrastructure, such as the Rawlinson family who invested £5,000 in the Lancaster Canal. ‘We have asked Area Meeting to think about the money they hold in trust and they have committed to making reparations.’

Friends then saw a video presentation from Teresa Parker, from Hertford Quakers, outlining how Quakers founded a colony in New Jersey in the late-seventeenth century. This included 14,000 enslaved people. The colonisers – or ‘adventurers’ – were recruited by offering benefits such as 150 acres of land, plus a further 150 for every servant they brought, and an extra seventy-five acres for a weaker servant or slave over fourteen years old. ‘The concept of whiteness had to be established in order for white Christian supremacy to be the dominant ideology,’ said Teresa.

Friends responded to the reports by suggesting research into Quaker involvement in insurance in London, and canals and enclosures, where people were often turned off the land. ‘At what stage in our Quaker story did the alternate, “sanitised” version start to get written?’ asked another Friend. 

These were all ‘worthy lines of enquiry’, said Ann, adding that the group was looking for more researchers with possible commissions. ‘I am conscious that we’ve presented you with a huge amount of information… some of which is hard to stomach. Time for reflection is really quite important. I hope we will come back to this next year as a special interest group.’ 

Writing by: Rebecca Hardy, journalist at the Friend; Imi Hills, a freelancer from West Weald Meeting; Joseph Jones, editor of the Friend; and Elinor Smallman, production manager at the Friend. 

Next week: 8-10 July preparation sessions and special interest group sessions. 

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